I'm So Good At Getting Penalties! What Now?

[Spectresoft]

It's true. I am apparently really foolish in my SEO and get penalised (not deindexed) a little too often. So, I was wondering what my best course of action is regarding two separate problems.

Case 1.) This SITE was doing well in the SERPs, I was taking it easy doing the normal amount of links etc. and going nice and steady. My rankings were increasing. Then I created a little "link wheel" with 4 sites (squidoo, articlerich, goarticles and ideamarketers). Of course then I get all stupid and before the goarticles article could be naturally indexed I blasted it with 60 pligg social bookmarks.
Next day all keywords for entire site are sub 500. Obviously a backlinking penalty. I deleted all the links from the wheel to the main site. However 1 month later my squidoo page now ranks 6th for the sites EMD lol too bad the site ranks 27th. Will it recover? Or should I scrap it, rewrite the content and start again?

Case 2.) A separate site. Great rankings for most pages, and I put up a new SEO optimized page. Of course, I figure I'm doing a fantastic job, as the page ranks for its keyword within 20 minutes. One backlink and 2 days later its gone sub 1000
I read the page again without the "I'm good at SEO" glasses on, and I realize I'm guilty of keyword stuffing. Dumb me. I go through and try to reduce it all, but again maybe I should delete the page, wait a few weeks and put a new one up with a different title, url etc and less stuffing? Not sure that would work.
Only the page got penalized.

Pretty dumb, but I'm new to this so its a learning experience. If anyone has any idea which is the speedier and less wasteful course of action I'd be grateful. I promise to stop doing so much stupid stuff (damn WSO's anyway right)

[dp40oz]

You'd be surprised how many penalties are onpage penalties rather then backlink penalties. Not to say that there aren't backlink penalties.

You can start over or you can look over your site. Combine pages that have similar content into 1 long page with tons of content. Just make your site better and wait about a month. If nothing comes back i'd call it a day. I will say though about 50% of the time if you improve the onpage quality of your site you'll come out of penalties.

[patrich]

Your "case 2" sounds more like the old google honeymoon effect to me, more than anything. I often see really good rankings for a day or two with a new page and then it disappears. Usually more backlinking and more content will get it climbing up.

As far as the "case 1", was this a brand new domain or and older one? Because I have a hard time believing that that many backlinks caused a -500 penalty. Its not uncommon for me to build two or three times that many links to a page, each day and I never get hit with penalties. Especially with the pligg bookmarks, I have thrown those at sites by the thousands and they never do anything, positive or negative.

[Mike Anthony]

rent your services out to tank competitor's sites?

[Spectresoft]

Thanks for the replies so far.

Regarding Case 1: While the backlink velocity was ok, I think google finding a linkwheel getting blasted with bookmarks gave me some kind of penalty, because only the EMD still exists. I am just unsure whether waiting it out for a month or two will work.

Case 2: Well perhaps it is just the old dance, but I did 'de-optimize' the site a bit and removed as much obvious stuffing as I could. I may just wait this out for a month and add other content.

None of the content is bad quality, and all pages are already 1000 words or more. I try to make them for users, not googlebot except Case 2 I may have got overzealous.

Any other ideas or suggestions?

Oh ya, ranking ruiner talents for rent. Cheap!

[thebitbotdotcom]

Originally Posted by Mike Anthony

rent your services out to tank competitor's sites?

LOL! That was funny Mike. Thanks for the laugh